Jeru said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to get out, beyond the fortress cordon, so we can signal the fleet. That or find a way to collapse the cordon altogether.’
Pael laughed hollowly. ‘And how do you propose we do that?’
Jeru glared. ‘Isn’t it your role to tell me, Academician?’
Pael leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘Not for the first time, you’re being ridiculous.’
Jeru growled. She turned to me. ‘You. What do you know about the Ghosts?’
I said, ‘They come from someplace cold. That’s why they are wrapped up in silvery shells. You can’t bring a Ghost down with laser fire because of those shells. They’re perfectly reflective.’
Pael said, ‘Not perfectly. They are based on a Planck-zero effect … About one part in a billion of incident energy is absorbed.’
I hesitated. ‘They say the Ghosts experiment on people.’
Pael sneered. ‘Lies put about by Jeru’s Commission for Historical Truth. To demonise an opponent is a tactic as old as mankind.’
Jeru wasn’t perturbed. ‘Then why don’t you put young Case right? How do the Ghosts go about their business?’
Pael said, ‘The Silver Ghosts tinker with the laws of physics. The Ghosts are motivated by a desire to understand the fine-tuning of the universe, which they believe betrayed them. Why are we here? You see, young tar, there is only a narrow range of the constants of physics within which life of any sort is possible. We think the Ghosts are studying this question by pushing at the boundaries – by tinkering with the laws which sustain and contain us all.’
I looked to Jeru; she shrugged. She said, ‘So how do they do this, Academician?’
Pael tried to explain. It was all to do with quagma.
Quagma is the state of matter which emerged from the Big Bang. Matter, when raised to sufficiently high temperatures, melts into a magma of quarks – a quagma. And at such temperatures the four fundamental forces of physics unify into a single superforce. When quagma is allowed to cool and expand its binding superforce decomposes into four sub-forces.
To my surprise, I understood some of this. The principle of the GUTdrive, which powers intrasystem ships like Brief Life Burns Brightly, is related.
Anyhow, by controlling the superforce decomposition, you can select the ratios between those sub-forces. And those ratios govern the fundamental constants of physics.
Something like that.
Pael said, ‘That marvellous reflective coating of theirs is an example. Each Ghost is surrounded by a thin layer of space in which a fundamental number called the Planck constant is significantly lower than elsewhere. Thus, quantum effects are collapsed … Because the energy carried by a photon, a particle of light, is proportional to the Planck constant, an incoming photon must shed most of its energy when it hits the shell – hence the reflectivity.’
‘All right,’ Jeru said. ‘So what are they doing here?’
Pael sighed. ‘The fortress star seems to be surrounded by an open shell of quagma and exotic matter. We surmise that the Ghosts have blown a bubble around each star, a spacetime volume in which the laws of physics are – tweaked.’
‘And that’s why our equipment failed.’
‘Presumably,’ said Pael, with cold sarcasm.
Jeru said, ‘An enemy who can deploy the laws of physics as a weapon is formidable. But in the long run, we will out-compete the Ghosts.’
Pael said bleakly, ‘Ah, the evolutionary destiny of mankind. How dismal. But we lived in peace with the Ghosts, under the Raoul Accords, for centuries. We are so different, with disparate motivations – why should there be a conflict, any more than between two species of birds in the same garden?’
I’d never seen birds, or a garden, so that passed me by.
Jeru glared. ‘Let’s return to practicalities. How do their fortresses work?’ When Pael didn’t reply, she snapped, ‘Academician, you’ve been inside a fortress cordon for an hour already and you haven’t made a single fresh observation?’
Acidly, Pael demanded, ‘What would you have me do?’
Jeru nodded at me. ‘What have you seen, tar?’
‘Our instruments and weapons don’t work,’ I said promptly. ‘The Brightly exploded. I broke my arm.’
Jeru said, ‘Till snapped his neck also.’ She flexed her hand within her glove. ‘What would make our bones more brittle? Anything else?’
Pael admitted, ‘I do feel somewhat warm.’
Jeru asked, ‘Could these body changes be relevant?’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Then figure it out.’
‘I have no equipment.’
Jeru dumped spare gear – weapons, beacons – in his lap. ‘You have your eyes, your hands and your mind. Improvise.’ She turned to me. ‘As for you, tar, let’s do a little infil. We still need to find a way off this scow.’
I glanced doubtfully at Pael. ‘There’s nobody to stand on stag.’
‘I know, tar. But there are only three of us.’ She grasped Pael’s shoulder, hard. ‘Keep your eyes open, Academician. We’ll come back the same way we left. So you’ll know it’s us. Do you understand?’
Pael shrugged her away, focusing on the gadgets on his lap.
I looked at him doubtfully. It seemed to me a whole platoon of Ghosts could have come down on him without his even noticing. But Jeru was right; there was nothing more we could do.
She studied me, fingered my arm. ‘You up to this?’
I could use the arm. ‘I’m fine, sir.’
‘You are lucky. A good war comes along once in a lifetime. And this is your war, tar.’
That sounded like parade-ground pep talk, and I responded in kind. ‘Can I have your rations, sir? You won’t be needing them soon.’ I mimed digging a grave.
She grinned back fiercely. ‘Yeah. When your turn comes, slit your suit and let the farts out before I take it off your stiffening corpse.’
Pael’s voice was trembling. ‘You really are monsters.’
I shared a mocking glance with Jeru. But we shut up, for fear of upsetting the earthworm further.
I grasped my fighting knife, and we slid away into the dark.
What we were hoping to find was some equivalent of a bridge. Even if we succeeded, I couldn’t imagine what we’d do next. Anyhow, we had to try.
We slid through the tangle. Ghost cable is tough, even to a knife blade. But it is reasonably flexible; you can just push it aside if you get stuck, although we tried to avoid doing that for fear of leaving a sign of our passing.
We used standard patrolling SOP, adapted for the circumstance. We would move for ten or fifteen minutes, clambering through the tangle, and then take a break for five minutes. I’d sip water – I was getting hot – and maybe nibble on a glucose tab, check on my arm, and pull the suit around me to get comfortable again. It’s the way to do it. If you just push yourself on and on you run down your reserves and end up in no fit state to achieve the goal anyhow.
And all the while I was trying to keep up my all-around awareness, protecting my dark adaptation, making appreciations. How far away is Jeru? What if an attack comes from in front, behind, above, below, left or right? Where can I find cover?
I began to build up an impression of the Ghost cruiser. It was a rough egg shape a couple of kilometres long, and basically a mass of the anonymous silvery cable. There were chambers and platforms and instruments stuck as if at random into the tangle, like food fragments in an old man’s beard. I guess it makes for a flexible, easily modified configuration. Where the tangle was a little less thick, I glimpsed a more substantial core, a cylinder running along the axis of the craft. Perhaps it was the drive unit. I wondered if it was functioning; perhaps, unlike the Brightly’s gear, Ghost equipment was designed to adapt to the changed conditions inside the fortress cordon.